By Vishvanath
Sri Lanka is an exceedingly active polity, where hardly a day passes without some headline-grabbing issues cropping up, so much so that it is well-nigh impossible to keep track of them. Currently, among the issues dominating the political scene is a campaign to bring the UNP and its offshoot, the SJB, together and forge an electoral alliance to contest future elections. Some contentious issues have stood in the way of bringing about a rapprochement between UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe and his SJB counterpart Sajith Premadasa. It was basically a clash between the duo that led to a split in the UNP in 2019. The UNP is however no stranger to conflicts and splits.
The ongoing efforts to reconcile the UNP and the SJB took a dramatic turn this week with three prominent UNPers—Ruwan Wijewardena, Akila Viraj Kariyawasam and Navin Dissanayake—meeting SJB leader Sajith Premadasa for a discussion. Describing the outcome of the meeting as positive, Navin has said they reached a consensus on the need to build trust and discuss modalities of an agreement. He has said they had Ranil’s blessings for the powwow.
In an interview with Hiru TV, Navin said he was hopeful that the two parties would be able to forge an alliance in time for the next Provincial Council elections, which he said the government would have to hold this year. He did not mince his words when he said he thought Sajith should lead the alliance to be formed because the SJB had more MPs than the UNP, and Ranil would continue to lead the UNP. Asked whether Ranil would agree to such an arrangement, Navi said he saw no reason why Ranil should not do so.
The irony of the late Minister Gamini Dissanayake’s son, Navin, proposing the late President Ranasinghe Premadasa’s son, Sajith, as the leader of a new political alliance to be formed between the UNP and the SJB, may not have been lost on political observers familiar with Sri Lankan politics in the early 1990s. One may recall that Gamini and Premadasa were sworn enemies, who went all out to destroy each other politically. How would they react if they knew of their sons’ conciliatory approach?
One of the reasons why Gamini, together with several other prominent UNPer, including Lalith Athulathmudali and G. M. Premachandra, rebelled against President Premadasa was a personality clash. Premadasa’s antipathy towards aristocracy, which Gamini belongs to, was known in political circles. Gamini also had presidential ambitions. Differences between President Premadasa and a group of dissidents in the UNP came to a head, with the latter trying to impeach the former, only to be sacked from the party. The UNP rebels, led by Gamini and Lalith, formed the Democratic United National Front (DUNF), whose raison d’etre was to dismantle the Premadasa government.
The Premadasa government unleashed violence against the DUNF leaders, and therefore the assassination of Lalith in April 1993 was blamed on the UNP. Premadasa vehemently denied any involvement in that assassination. The LTTE assassinated Premadasa a few days later. Gamini rejoined the UNP after Premadasa’s demise. He took on Ranil, who did not take kindly to his re-entry. Their clash persisted until Gamini’s death at the hands of an LTTE suicide bomber the following year in the run-up to a presidential election.
The UNP took years to recover from the 1992 split, and subsequent electoral losses, but it has not been able to win the executive presidency since then. The rise of Ranil to the presidency was fortuitous. The UNP managed to form a weak government in 2001 by engineering crossovers from the SLFP-led People’s Alliance government, and returned to power in 2015 with the help of Maithripala Sirisena, who won the presidency with the help of a UNP-led alliance. Navin and Sajith held ministerial posts in the UNP-led governments.
Another notable irony is that Navin has sided with Ranil, who threw his weight behind President Premadasa while Gamini and others were trying to topple him and clashed with Gamini, and Sajith has turned against Ranil, who backed Premadasa during a crisis.
Generational politics has had a corrosive effect on aristocratic dominance over party politics; the children of aristocrats and non-aristocrats have adopted a different approach to politics unlike their parents. It can also be argued that political power and wealth have turned non-aristocrats into members of the political elite. In 2024, the JVP-led NPP turned its election campaigns into a social revolution against aristocracy. Sociologists have defined social revolutions as rapid, basic transformations of both the state and class structure that are driven in part by mass movements or class conflict from below.
Meanwhile, the ongoing efforts to reconcile the UNP and the SJB must be of serious concern not only to the NPP but also to the SLPP, which is hoping to win back the floating votes it has lost to the NPP. A UNP-SJB alliance is likely to provide the electorate with an alternative to the NPP as well as the SLPP; the disillusioned UNP voters who backed the NPP in the last three elections, out of frustration, are likely to back their former party again if the UNP and the SJB form an electoral alliance. Given the unresolved issues on all fronts, unfulfilled campaign promises, and anti-incumbency sentiments, the NPP government will have its work cut out to shore up its approval rating. The UNP and the SJB are likely to capitalize on this situation by forging an alliance fast to contest the next Provincial Council elections.
